before her marriage was cluttered with odds and ends, cotillion favors and photographs, college pennants and small unwise purchases—trophies of the gayety and conquest which were her life.
And Nina had “come out.” It had cost a great deal, and it was not so much to introduce her to society as to put a family recognition on a fact already accomplished, for Nina had brought herself out unofficially at sixteen. There had been the club ballroom, and a great many flowers which withered before they could be got to the hospital; and new clothing for all the family, and a caterer and orchestra. After that, for a cold and tumultuous winter Mrs. Wheeler had sat up with the dowagers night after night until all hours, and the next morning had let Nina sleep, while she went about her household duties. She had aged, rather, and her determined smile had grown a little fixed.
She was a good woman, and she wanted her children's happiness more than anything in the world, but she had a faint and sternly repressed feeling of relief when Nina announced her engagement. Nina did it with characteristic sangfroid, at dinner one night.
“Don't ring for Annie for a minute, mother,” she said. “I want to tell you all something. I'm going to marry Leslie Ward.”
There had been a momentary pause. Then her father said:
“Just a minute. Is that Will Ward's boy?”
“Yes. He's not a boy.”
“Well, he'll come around to see me before there's any engagement. Has that occurred to either of you?”
“Oh, he'll be around. He'd have come to-night, but Howard Moore is having his bachelor dinner. I hope he doesn't look shot to pieces to-morrow. These bachelor things—! We'd better have a dinner or something, mother, and announce it.”
There had been the dinner, with a silver loving cup bought for the occasion, and thereafter to sit out its useless days on the Sheraton sideboard. And there had been a trousseau and a wedding so expensive that a small frown of anxiety had developed between Walter Wheeler's eyebrows and stayed there.
For Nina's passion for things was inherent, persisting after her marriage. She discounted her birthday and Christmases in advance, coming around to his office a couple of months before the winter holidays and needing something badly.
“It's like this, daddy,” she would say. “You're going to give me a check for Christmas anyhow, aren't you? And it would do me more good now. I simply can't go to another ball.”
“Where's your trousseau?”
“It's worn out-danced to rags. And out of date, too.”
“I don't understand it, Nina. You and Leslie have a good income. Your mother and I—”
“You didn't have any social demands. And wedding presents! If one more friend of mine is married—”
He would get out his checkbook and write a check slowly and thoughtfully. And tearing it off would say:
“Now remember, Nina, this is for Christmas. Don't feel aggrieved when the time comes and you have no gift from us.”
But he knew that when the time came Margaret, his wife, would hold out almost to the end, and then slip into a jeweler's and buy Nina something she simply couldn't do without.
It wasn't quite fair, he felt. It wasn't fair to Jim or to Elizabeth. Particularly to Elizabeth.
Sometimes he looked at Elizabeth with a little prayer in his heart, never articulate, that life would be good to her; that she might keep her illusions and her dreams; that the soundness and wholesomeness of her might keep her from unhappiness. Sometimes, as she sat reading or sewing, with the light behind her shining through her soft hair, he saw in her a purity that was almost radiant.
He was in arms at once a night or two before Dick had invited Elizabeth to go to the theater when Margaret Wheeler said:
“The house was gayer when Nina was at home.”
“Yes. And you were pretty sick of it. Full of roistering young idiots. Piano and phonograph going at once, pairs of gigglers in the pantry at the refrigerator, pairs on the stairs and on the verandah, cigar-ashes—my cigars—and cigarettes over everything, and more infernal spooning going on than I've ever seen in my life.”
He had resumed his newspaper, to put it down almost at once.
“What's that Sayre boy hanging around for?”
“I think he's in love with her, Walter.”
“Love? Any of the Sayre tribe? Jim Sayre drank himself to death, and this boy is like him. And Jim Sayre wasn't faithful to his wife. This boy is—well, he's an heir. That's why he was begotten.”
Margaret Wheeler stared at him.
“Why, Walter!” she said. “He's a nice boy, and he's a gentleman.”
“Why? Because he gets up when you come into the room? Why in heaven's name don't you encourage real men to come here? There's Dick Livingstone. He's a man.”
Margaret hesitated.
“Walter, have you ever thought there was anything queer about Dick Livingstone's coming here?”
“Darned good for the town that he did come.”
“But—nobody ever dreamed that David and Lucy had a nephew. Then he turns up, and they send him to medical college, and all that.”
“I've got some relations I haven't notified the town I possess,” he said grimly.
“Well, there's something odd. I don't believe Henry Livingstone, the Wyoming brother, ever had a son.”
“What possible foundation have you for a statement like that?”
“Mrs. Cook Morgan's sister-in-law has been visiting her lately. She says she knew Henry Livingstone well years ago in the West, and she never heard he was married. She says positively he was not married.”
“And trust the Morgan woman to spread the good news,” he said with angry sarcasm. “Well, suppose that's true? Suppose Dick is an illegitimate child? That's the worst that's implied, I daresay. That's nothing against Dick himself. I'll tell the world there's good blood on the Livingstone side, anyhow.”
“You were very particular about Wallie Sayre's heredity, Walter.”
“That's different,” he retorted, and retired into gloomy silence behind his newspaper. Drat these women anyhow. It was like some fool female to come there and rake up some old and defunct scandal. He'd stand up for Dick, if it ever came to a show-down. He liked Dick. What the devil did his mother matter, anyhow? If this town hadn't had enough evidence of Dick Livingstone's quality the last few years he'd better go elsewhere. He—
He got up and whistled for the dog.
“I'm going to take a walk,” he said briefly, and went out. He always took a walk when things disturbed him.
On the Sunday afternoon after Dick had gone Elizabeth was alone in her room upstairs. On the bed lay the sort of gown Nina would have called a dinner dress, and to which Elizabeth referred as her dark blue. Seen thus, in
